“Why is it that nobody seems to be paying any attention to the similarities
that were seeing now between what Hugo Chavez is doing in Venezuela and what is happening here in America?” asked Glenn Beck on his TV show last night.

It’s an excellent question. The answer probably has something to do with the left-wing biases of the mainstream media, the degraded state of American public education, and the fact that Americans generally have little interest in what goes on in faraway places like Venezuela.

Like Chavez, Obama is a charismatic, narcissistic figure who encourages the cult of personality that has developed around him and has tried to use government resources to promote it. He has appointed dozens of so-called czars with vast powers over industry and the economy (Chavez has simply seized the industries). He has legions of mindless fanatical followers who don’t even seem to realize how profoundly un-American their project is (Chavez has violent chavista thugs who rough up regime opponents).

He has singled out and scapegoated specific groups within society, e.g. the rich, businessmen, in order to distract from the problems he is creating as he undermines American civil society (Chavez does the same and uses America itself as a whipping boy in his propaganda). He is leading America on the road to certain ruin by nationalizing healthcare, the automobile industry, banks, and by raising taxes, debasing the currency, weakening America abroad, and kneecapping the War on Terror whose name is so offensive to him he cannot even bring himself to say it.

Obama is intolerant of dissent and wants to use the power of government to silence his opponents via the Fairness Doctrine or whatever the latest iteration of it may be (Chavez threatens, fines, intimidates and shuts down media outlets).